


Final breath

by aeber



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst(?), Character Death, M/M, Terminal Illness, adffgkj don't kill me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeber/pseuds/aeber
Summary: He saw him whenever his condition worsened, but wanted to see him all the same.(sick chrom and grima as death)
Relationships: Chrom/Gimurei | Grima/My Unit | Reflet | Robin, Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	Final breath

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by some twitter suggestions! this one in particular is for meeka
> 
> poem quoted is Hour, by Carol Ann Duffy  
> (i love carol ann duffy she's my fav im not snotty i promise i just have gay experiences related to her poems-)

He gazed out of the hospital window, the tubes in his skin entangled in a mess of skin and cold fingers.

“Have you come,” he said quietly, “to take me away?”

“Not yet.” The apparition answered. “I’ll stay with you a little longer.”

-

They met in a ditch, unromantically, when Chrom thought he was going to die.

And technically he would have. He had waltzed out of the hospital, thinking that he’d at least make it to the bus stop, distinctly aware that the stuff in his veins could have easily knocked two elephants out. The dirt felt pleasant under his stiff limbs and he wanted nothing more to lay in the wet earth until he passed out from the drugs running in his system.

He saw a man walk past and drunkenly called out to him.

The man stopped, lifted his head to survey him quietly, his hair white as milk and softly billowing despite the thick slate of mist that had descended on the area. His feet touched the ground, but that was it, simply touching, not standing.

 _Naga_ , Chrom thought with his brain that was shutting down. _He’s hot_.

Shame that he was dying, face down, in a ditch.

The man looked at him with his scarlet eyes. He took a motion to step forward, the heavily embroidered coat on his shoulders unfettered by gravity. Then he stopped.

“Chrom!” He heard his sister cry breathlessly. The stranger turned his attention towards her.

As she dragged him out of the ditch and off the ground, he eyed the man through his periphery, and groaning vaguely, accidentally made eye contact.

Ah, shoot.

-

The next time he saw him was during an episode that came so quickly he didn’t even have the time to call the nurse. Twitching quietly, with every nerve in his body set on fire and his chest wildly palpitating like an unweighted metronome, he saw the man again, this time in clear, vivid detail.

He didn’t bring a scythe like in the old legends. He didn’t look inhuman at all, except for his unnatural hair and maybe, that there was no shadow cast beneath his feet. He walked over, frowning, and stood over Chrom’s twitching body.

“You don’t want to leave.”

Chrom couldn’t have answered; his throat was too busy convulsing from the inside.

“But you want me to stay.”

He swept his gaze over him haltingly, finally landing on the disfigured brand on his emaciated right arm.

“I’ll come back for you.”

Chrom made some rasping noises, screeching softly in the empty hospital room. By the time he recovered the strength to speak, the stranger had already gone.

-

“What is there over on the other side?”

Chrom asked one day, eyes unmoving from the television screen. A bowl of apples, sliced and washed, sat on the table in front of him. He handed one to Grima, who grunted unamusingly, and popped it in his mouth when he made no gesture to take it.

“Reincarnation.”

“No hell or heaven? Not even purgatory?”

“I don’t know. I only deliver the dead.”

“So, I might have met you, in a past life.”

Grima gave him a wistful look that said, maybe, but I won’t tell.

“Ah, and I was so looking forward to retiring in the afterlife.”

He stared at his hands, which were cracked from antiseptic and the dry, recirculated air.

“I want to go outside.”

It was raining outside. After the brief drizzle, the birds began to chirp, and the white mist that had enveloped the mountain lifted in the matter of minutes. They watched it rise from the forest, curling upwards into the air like an ancient, unformed beast.

“It’s going to be summer soon. Won’t you stay a little longer?”

-

He was being wheeled into the surgery room. The clip in his finger, the oximeter, dug under his skin, as did the many metal parts inserted into him over the past few years of his life. They couldn’t sedate him. He couldn’t be knocked out without being killed, thanks to the strange resistance he had towards drugs.

Grima had told him it was because of his heritage.

Then why me? Not my sisters, my father, not—

Grima appeared hours after coming out of his pain-induced coma. His entire body was numb, but he still called out, clutching at nothing.

“You.” He managed hoarsely. “Kiss me.”

Grima’s lips were cold, felt warm, compared to the steel and glass of his deathbed. He could feel pressure sliding against his lips, slowly solidifying, as if he was drawing out life by touch alone. It didn’t matter that he was siphoning time out of his remaining years, months.

_Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour,_

He ran his fingers along his spine, feeling the ridges of his back, his ribcage, the still, unbeating heart resting nestled between his lungs.

_bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich._

He could feel him grow alive atop him, breath flitting across his cheek in warm puffs, the phantom weight of his grip, on his wrists, heavier, tighter, taking the wind out from his mouth, squeezing the blood from his feeble limbs.

They parted, Chrom dizzied and colored to his cheeks, and Grima turned towards the door.

He knelt, parted the blue-tinted hair on Chrom’s forehead, and was gone.

It was only then that he noticed the frazzled beeping of the cardiac monitor, surging as if telling him something he could not hear.

-

He knew he would die someday, but not now, not when he had so many things he wanted to do. To see.

He knew it was time. Emmeryn held his hand while he was unconscious, calling his name, though the warmth from his palm to fingers would remain after his death, a warmth that only belonged to the dead. Lissa couldn’t form anything coherent in her choked sobs. His father stood mutely, as if waiting for him to die.

And Grima sat on a chair, expressionless.

The oxygen mask kept him from speaking. The tubes through his nose kept his sensations muddled as he laid perfectly motionless, everything around him muddling into grey mush. They said hearing was the last thing that remained as you were dying.

He heard Emmeryn cry, but he never saw her tears.

_I want you. Are we going to somewhere better?_

There wasn’t a reply. After all, the dead couldn’t speak. The dead couldn’t hear.

Grima stood up, gathered his coat from the bedside table, and looked at Chrom for one last time.

He left.

**Author's Note:**

> rip chrom 2020
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shtrigaei)! i don't use tumblr much but here's my [main](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/chocolatecocoamilk) / [side ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/aebers)  
> ((i'd love to make friends pls


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